EU proposal for a Directive on Green Claims

5 April 2023: The ‘Green Claims’ proposal aims to address greenwashing and stop the proliferation of public and private environmental labels to ensure that consumers receive trustworthy information about the environmental credentials of products and services. The proposal targets ‘green claims’ made by businesses that state or imply an environmental impact.

The proposed Directive on Green Claims covers all voluntary claims about the environmental impacts, aspects or performances of a product, a service, or the trader itself. If a company makes a claim, it will need to prove that claim by submitting information to a trusted verifier. The European Commission is attempting to fight greenwashing especially when a company markets a service as 'zero emission', 'carbon/climate neutral' or similar. It will not ban carbon offsetting, but the information provided to consumers should be correct and the company making the claim has to be able to support the claim with the verifier. The proposition is based on the principle of providing consumers with reliable information about the efficiency and environmental footprint of their flights. The Commission also wants to avoid double counting. The rules are voluntary, so they only affect companies who wish to make green claims to consumers and use environmental labels. Under the new rules, they will only allow new public schemes on environmental labels to work together on reliable, EU-level labels such as the EU Ecolabel. Environmental labels must be transparent, verified by a third party and regularly reviewed.

The proposed directive would require Member States to ensure that minimum requirements for substantiation and communication are respected by companies when they make voluntary green claims. Scientific evidence will be required, comparisons with other products must be fair and based on equivalent data, and claims or labels that use aggregate scoring of the overall environmental impact on biodiversity, climate etc shall not be permitted unless set in EU rules. By putting a common set of rules within the EU internal market, the aim is to give a competitive advantage to companies who make a genuine effort to develop environmental-friendly products, services and practices. The Commission will support companies by making available funding to provide data to support solid claims and develop calculation tools for SMEs.